


Unwritten Hymns

by nabokoves



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Religious Conflict, Romance, mulder and his deep psychological issues surrounding religion, mulder obsessing over scully, spoilers: memento mori and allusions to the samantha arc, this isn't actually as religious as the summary might make it seem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 16:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5424710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nabokoves/pseuds/nabokoves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Their greatest point of disagreement was on the existence of God. Despite all his headstrong belief, Mulder refused to consider the divine... What he never told her was that he prayed a lot during the days when he thought she was going to die."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwritten Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> This is an overemotional wreck... please forgive me...  
> (setting is post Memento Mori, spoilers for Memento Mori and a bit of the Samantha arc)

_I have been astonished that men could die martyrs_

_for their religion--_

_I have shuddered at it,_

_I shudder no more._

_I could be martyred for my religion._

_Love is my religion_

_and I could die for that._

_I could die for you._

_My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet._

_-John Keats_

 

He fell in love with her on a Sunday. It was only a month after she’d been assigned to debunk his pet project, his beloved X-Files. She wasn’t even there to witness it- although he wouldn’t have dared let her know. He woke up that Sunday to the sound of his phone, ringing tinny in his ears. Annoyed, he picked it up, fully prepared to hiss at the caller.

“Mulder, it’s me.” His new partner, the redheaded doctor, had a voice like a songbird. He sighed and prepared to softly explain that he refused to work today, and perhaps to ask if she would reserve the calls for a more acceptable time on Sunday (i.e nothing before noon).

“Sorry to call- I just wanted to know if you’d seen the Washington Post this morning.” He hadn’t even seen the outside of his bedroom this morning, much less the news. “They found some plane-like thing buried in Oklahoma- people are buzzing over it being a UFO. It’s not, of course, but I know that’s your thing… Anyways, I’ll let you get back to bed. Enjoy your aliens.” As quickly as she’d called, she hung up. Not even thirty seconds of his day- but Mulder couldn’t find it in him to drift back to sleep. Something about her call- the brevity, the playful teasing, the unfathomable sweetness of the act- left him playing her words over and over again in his head.

Their greatest point of disagreement was on the existence of God. Despite all his headstrong belief, Mulder refused to consider the divine. In fact, his partner’s steadfast need to believe in something holy filled him with a misplaced anger. If she was so ready to believe in angels, what was so implausible about his own beliefs? As much as he did not like to admit it, Mulder did not understand Scully. She remained even more of a mystery to him than his cabinets full of unsolved cases.

What he never told her was that he prayed a lot during the days when he thought she was going to die. His nightmares still graced him with that white room, her solemn face as she showed him that inoperable tumor and embraced her mortality too freely. He cried that night, shoving his face in the pillow, as if she might hear him from beyond the walls of his empty apartment. He wanted to be smothered. He wanted to die knowing that he would never, ever outlive Dana Scully.

So the next Sunday, almost exactly four years since he’d fallen in love with her, he went to church. It was midnight, because not even cancer could drive him to attend church with others. The chapel reminded him of a mausoleum. He stared up at the stained glass images of Christ, the beautified versions of the crucifixion, and growled his prayers. She loves you, you bastard. She doesn’t deserve this. Don’t you dare take her from this world. Don’t you dare take her from me.

What kept him coming back? Mulder hated God almost as much as he denied that a God even existed. At Oxford, psych majors learned that a person’s relationship with God mirrors their relationship with their father. Mulder’s father had once offered him up as a martyr, but the offer was rejected. Mulder would not forget that- in the eyes of God, he was not even good enough to be martyred.

Every Sunday, in the early morning darkness until the beginnings of dawn, Mulder growled and hissed his prayers from the back pew. As the days blurred closer together, as Scully began slipping closer and closer to death, he forgot how to be angry. Sometimes he forgot he was supposed to be praying, and he just cried. Or screamed. He grew terribly jealous of the dying Christ in the windows.

Scully was not saved by an act of God. She was saved through an act of science- her beloved, devoted science. Still, when Mulder saw her standing in her hospital gown, blessedly alive, he felt an overwhelming urge to call it a miracle. He wanted to kiss her until they died of natural causes, or else he might lose her again. He wanted to press his lips to her neck and trace the chain of her cross, so he could tell her how her belief had saved him from a death by proxy. The impossible distance demanded by their partnership became too much for him.

The day after she was released from the hospital, he asked her to come to his apartment. It was a Sunday morning, early enough to see the Catholics piling into Mass from his back window. She came over in a haze of worry and confusion, concerned that he’d hurt himself or someone else. All he wanted was to confess to her, admit everything so they could stop agonizing in limbo. Again, he wanted to kiss her- he always wanted to kiss her, but he never knew how to say it.

Wordlessly, he met her at the door, pulling her into a hug which he never intended to release. He traced his fingers across the back of her neck, the small incision which now kept her alive. It was now his favorite part of her, though everything else was a close second. She mumbled his name into his shoulder, foggy with confusion. She wanted to know if he was okay. He pulled back to look at her, struggling to find something to say. He brimmed with words so corny they would make even the poets puke.

He wanted to say: _I want you to make me believe in angels. I want to take you like communion. I want to show you divinity. You are the reason I may consider forgiving God. You are the only thing I have ever had faith in. You are the thing which will one day absolve me of every messy sin I’ve already forgotten._

Then she moved her lips to his and his prayers dissolved in her mouth.

 

 


End file.
